The People

Our evening

Everyone who has organised (their own) wedding, knows that the sheer amount of little decisions that need to be made during the last week is so overwhelmingly big that it becomes a bit too much at some point. Even with all the help we got and with all the baffling amount of work S's parents put into the wedding prep, my mind still cracked. The reason - the most common of all reasons - the weather! The time - three days before the wedding. When your mind picks up speed and you get into this almost manic state of mind, and when you happen to get some 5 hours of sleep during the last weeks, then it's just too much to handle. So my anxiety got channeled into the weather canal which in the end meant that I was obsessively checking the weather forecast. Rain. Rain. And the evening three day before the wedding saw some crocodile tears and S had to calm me down because I was convinced that the weather would ruin everything.

Then the first guests started to arrive. (And as a side note - I will be forever grateful for the fact that we didn't just have a wedding day but more like a wedding week because the first guests arrived on Tuesday and the last ones left next Monday - the wedding itself taking place on Friday in between - and we got to spend so many wonderful hours with everyone.) NJ and M were the first ones to arrive from Scotland and as soon as I saw them in between my apointments and phone calls, I knew we were to have some mighty good time together. I hadn't seen NJ for some three years and it meant so much to me to see them there. But the worry and anxiety still remained. 

And then Wednesday evening came. I could see NJ and M spending some quality time on the deck at the lake and I didn't want to disturb them but I had a little request concerning the wedding day and I knew if I didn't ask it there and then, I'd forget again. So I went down to the lake and I asked what I needed to ask but then we got into a longer conversation. And then S came looking for me after a while and stayed there as well and after some time S. K. arrived at Ekebyholm and also joined us. And what had started as "it won't take more than a minute" turned into a couple of hours of the best conversation and fellowship imaginable, and me and S ended up telling the story of how we found each other last summer and there was so much laughter and so much love and so much joy in our being together there. And we ended the evening with a spontaneous prayer meeting and we praised God for His amazing goodness and grace in our lives. And I could almost physically feel the tension and anxiety leave my mind because I remembered again, there and then, what the whole thing was about - it was about spending good time with the nearest and dearest, it was about celebrating life and love and friendships, and no amount of rain or hail or thunder could ruin or take that joy away from us. So I stopped checking the weather forecast, stopped caring about it.

And this is what I remember the most from the wedding weekend - the people. The pure joy of seeing old friends and relatives and family members (and also local church members), from Estonia and Sweden and Finland and Norway and England and Scotland. It meant a whole world for me that they would be there, that they would see our tears of joy and hear our vows of commitment, that they would be a part of the wonderful dinner party (12 speeches in total!) and would celebrate way into the night until we could not celebrate any more and had to get some sleep. And guests showing up to church the next morning, NJ preaching and everyone almost singing the roof off the church building, and then another wonderful meal in the castle and long evening hours with conversations and walks and dad doing his jazz thing on the big piano in the castle... It was wonderful. Much more than I could have ever asked for.  

Oh, and by the way. The weather happened to be perfect on the wedding day, +22'C and cloudy. No-one was hot, no-one was cold, and our photographer had a big smile on her face.